Business Assistance Aimed at Boosting Pre-K in Alabama

One of the nation’s most highly rated state-financed pre-K programs is getting help from the business community to help more families learn about it.

The Alabama Power Foundation has awarded $30,000 to the Alabama School Readiness Alliance—a coalition of early-childhood organizations—to help promote the state’s prekindergarten program and to lobby the state legislature for more money.

An annual report on state pre-K efforts from the New Brunswick, N.J.-based National Institute for Early Education Research gives Alabama’s program a perfect 10 on quality measures. But access to the program, which began in 2000, is limited, and only 2 percent—or about 1,000—of...